A lot of misunderstanding surrounds the homeopathic
understanding of the terms ‘disease’ and ‘cure.’ This arises
because people generally are already ‘poisoned’ with the modern
allopathic concept of a disease as a named condition and its removal as
a cure. In order to more fully appreciate the homeopathic view, we need
to start from a fresh appraisal of the whole issue.

Any ‘disease’ is simply a deviation from
normal health and well-being, characterised by various symptoms in
every part of the psychophysical totality. For example, I have a cold
today, which in my case means a blocked nose, a funny metallic smell in
my nose, more nasal mucus than usual, poor sleep, slight chestiness,
slight cough, stiff neck, feeling ill-tempered and on a short fuse.
These symptoms form a complex that is unique to me and that is only
labelled ‘cold’ as a convenience.

This label should not imply, as it often does, a
distinct causative factor or disease entity that could
elicit the identical symptoms in others. It is merely a loose label
given to a symptom complex for ease of speaking about it. Once you have
this concept fixed then it becomes clear that any remedy for this ‘disease
totality’ must match this unique totality, not just parts of it, and
it must therefore match an individualised drug, specific to this
case, rather than a generalised drug that might match a generalised
disease entity applicable to all cases. The latter approach is that
chosen by conventional medicine, which pre-supposes that individual
cases are conceptually inferior in value to the pooled symptoms derived
from many cases. It sacrifices individuality for the sake of finding
grouped data of a more generalised supposed disease entity.

The allopathic idea that disease is "a
separate thing from the living whole…is an absurdity, that could only
be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp." [Organon, Aph
13] Only the observant "physician clearly perceives what is to
be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of
disease," [Aph 3] and they observe that "every
individual disease…[consists of] the changes in the health of the body
and of the mind (morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be
perceived externally by means of the senses." [Aph 6] Thus,
disease comprises "only the deviations from the former healthy
state;" [Aph 6] it consisting solely of "the totality
of these its symptoms." [Aph 7] Thus, in a word, "the
totality of the symptoms must be the principal, indeed the only thing
the physician has to take note of in every case of disease and to remove
by means of his art, in order that it shall be cured and transformed
into health." [Aph 7]

Sickness is "a state of being of the organism
wherein it is dynamically altered by the morbidly deranged vital force,
as an altered state of health," [Aph 8] Therefore, so to say,
"it is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state,
that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations," [Aph
11] Furthermore, "it is the morbidly affected vital force alone
that produces disease

1,
so that the morbid phenomena perceptible to our senses express at the
same time all the internal change, that is to say, the whole morbid
derangement of the internal dynamis; in a word, they reveal the whole
disease." [§ 12 Fifth
Edition] Disease can thus be portrayed as "the affection of the
morbidly deranged, spirit-like dynamis (vital force) that animates our
body in the invisible interior, and the totality of the outwardly
cognizable symptoms produced by it in the organism and representing the
existing malady, constitute a whole; they are one and the same."
[§ 15 Fifth Edition] A disease consists of nothing "besides the
totality of the symptoms." [Aph 18]

It therefore follows that "medicines could
never cure disease if they did not possess the power of altering man's
state of health," [Aph 19] and "their curative power
must be owing solely to this power they possess of altering man's state
of health." [Aph 19] And additionally, "this
spirit-like power to alter man's state of health (and hence to cure
diseases) which lies hidden in the inner nature of medicines can never
be discovered by us by a mere effort of reason; it is only by experience
of the phenomena it displays when acting on the state of health of man
that we can become clearly cognizant of it." [§ 20 Fifth
edition]

This naturally leads us to consider the curative
principle of medicines: "now, as it is undeniable that the
curative principle in medicines is not in itself perceptible, and as in
pure experiments with medicines conducted by the most accurate
observers, nothing can be observed that can constitute them medicines or
remedies except that power of causing distinct alterations in the state
of health of the human body." [§ 21] It follows that,
"for the totality of the symptoms of the disease to be cured, a
medicine must be sought which (according as experience shall prove
whether the morbid symptoms are most readily, certainly, and permanently
removed and changed into health by similar or opposite medicinal
symptoms

1)
has a tendency to produce similar or opposite symptoms."
[Aph 22]

As Hahnemann says, "all pure experience,
however, and all accurate research convince us that persistent symptoms
of disease are far from being removed and annihilated by opposite
symptoms of medicines." ["§ 23] And experience also
teaches that only "that medicine which, in its action on the
healthy human body, has demonstrated its power of producing the greatest
number of symptoms similar to those observable in the case of disease
under treatment, does also, in doses of suitable potency and
attenuation, rapidly, radically and permanently remove the totality of
the symptoms of this morbid state." [Aph 25]

"The curative power of medicines, therefore,
depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in
strength (§ 12 - 26), so that each individual case of disease is most
surely, radically, rapidly and permanently annihilated and removed only
by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) in the most
similar and complete manner the totality of its symptoms, which at the
same time are stronger than the disease." [Aph 27]

At the more subtle level, the disease actually "depends
only on a peculiar morbid derangement of our vital force in sensations
and functions." [Aph 29] Therefore, a true homeopathic cure
consists of a "homoeopathic cure of the vital force deranged by
natural disease," [Aph 29] not through the removal or
suppression of symptoms. To the homeopath, the allopath merely chases
symptoms around the body, suppressing one so-called ‘disease’ here
and another one there throughout the life of the patient achieving only
palliation and never true cure.

In summary, we can see that a disease is the totality
of the individual patient symptom data. Cure is the total removal of all
the symptom totality. Only when each nuance of symptom totality of
sickness and drug match can the disease be removed by the law of
similars. This law operates only because of the symptom totality of each
individualised case, NOT because of pooled averages derived from
hundreds of cases as pertains in conventional medicine. Sydenham first
committed the chief conceptual error that infected all subsequent
medical practice, both in the impulse to classify and name diseases and
in then proposing that they are caused in broad populations by invading disease
entities of a generalised nature. It is this very conceptual error
that lies at the root of allopathy, while in homeopathy each case is
treated uniquely on the basis of the symptom totality of each individual
patient, rather than attempting to expel from each patient the same
broad disease entity having the same name.

We can also see the subtlety and brilliance of
Hahnemann’s medical thinking, to which the Organon stands as an
incredible testament. The simple flow of his seamless logic is entirely
rooted not in wordy sophistries or theoretical concepts, but is grounded
in the pragmatic thread of practical experiments with drugs and his
meticulously close observation of diverse disease processes. At an early
stage in his medical thinking we can also see that he rejected
contraries, mixed drugs and high doses as purely damaging therapeutic
measures, adopting instead small doses, and single drugs employed on the
basis of similars. The cataclysmic upshot of this subtle choice on his
part, is that they must be employed not for disease entities
affecting whole populations, but for each case viewed as a unique
example of sickness for which a single drug must be matched chosen
solely on the totality of the individual patient’s symptom data.

The choices Hahnemann made had led him down a
completely different track from conventional medicine, doomed as it was
to soldier on with mixed drugs, high doses and contraries employed not
for individual cases but for entire populations. To the homeopath, such
‘cures’ are mere delusions created by a therapeutic juggling act:
the temporary suppression of a small compass of symptoms selected from
the patient totality, given a name and thus conceived to be a specific
disease entity, the same from case to case. This very ‘conjuring trick’
is what Hahnemann utterly condemned as a clumsy doctrine bringing only
more suffering upon humanity as the elusive internal causes of
sickness [miasms] linger on untouched by these superficial allopathic
treatments and continue to act as a fertile spring throwing to the
surface new ‘diseases’ throughout the patient’s life.